The ultimate hometown girl

In the world of Texas football, team allegiances are hard-lined, and devotion runs deep. The small college town of Walker—the setting of Emily Giffin’s seventh novel, The One & Only—is no exception. Beautiful, down-to-earth Shea Rigsby is the ultimate hometown girl: She’s happily spent all of her 33 years in Walker supporting her beloved Broncos. With a messy, less than perfect family to call her own, Shea was raised alongside her best friend, Lucy, the effortlessly chic and opinionated daughter of Walker’s legendary football coach, Clive Carr.

Three lives intersect at a charming Seattle yarn shop

In Blossom Street Brides, beloved author Debbie Macomber returns to the thriving community of women who frequent a knitting shop on Seattle’s Blossom Street. This time around, Lydia Goetz, the owner of A Good Yarn Shop, is worried the future of her business, while newlywed Bethanne Scranton is struggling to maintain her long-distance marriage, and Lauren Elliott has just broken up with the man she was certain she would marry.

The good mother

A mother is torn between protecting her son and telling the truth in Carla Buckley's thought-provoking, suspenseful third novel, The Deepest Secret. Eve has spent the last 15 years fighting to keep her son safe from sunlight—he has a rare genetic disorder, XP. But one rainy night, a car accident changes her life forever, and Eve's conscience and her motherly love are put to the test. We asked Buckley a few questions about her new book.

Second chances at Cedar Cove B&B

In Rose Harbor in Bloom, beloved author Debbie Macomber returns to the bucolic small town of Cedar Cove and the Rose Harbor Inn, where proprietor Jo Marie is anticipating the arrival of several guests. Mary Smith, with a scarf covering her shorn hair, checks in first. Mary reveals little of the reasons for her visit to Cedar Cove, but it is clear that she is gravely ill. Readers soon learn that...

The king that might have been

While the story of Henry VIII and his descendants continues to fascinate, it's getting more and more difficult for a writer to make it feel fresh. Debut novelist Laura Andersen manages that feat in The Boleyn King, a story that imagines what might have happened if Anne Boleyn had borne a living son. In Andersen's alternate universe, King...

Romance Column by Christie Ridgway

Former lovers reunite in the latest Eternity Springs novel by Emily March, Nightingale Way. The home of journalist Cat Blackburn is firebombed after her latest piece hits a nerve. Cat’s ex-husband, CIA agent Jack Davenport, kidnaps her and takes her to his beautiful mountain retreat near Eternity Springs, Colorado, where he can protect her until the perpetrator is found. While Cat is...

You've got mail

At first glance, Alice Buckle seems to have her picture-perfect life by the tail—a handsome, Ivy League-educated husband, two darling children, a rewarding career as a drama teacher and a comfortable home in Oakland, California. But for the angst-filled 44-year-old heroine of Melanie Gideon’s first novel, Wife 22, the arrival of a mysterious e-mail survey forces her to acknowledge...

Book Clubs Column by Julie Hale

SHARED DESTINYA collection of interconnected narratives, Julie Otsuka’s richly imagined novel, The Buddha in the Attic, focuses on a group of Japanese women who come to California after World War I as “picture brides” to marry men they’ve never met. Otsuka employs a first-person plural voice to tell their story, a device that emphasizes the characters’ shared fate....

Fostering a life in full bloom

Each year, nearly 20,000 young people “age out” of America’s foster care system, and many of them have nowhere to go. Writer Vanessa Diffenbaugh has transformed this sad statistic into an extraordinary debut novel.The focus of a fierce bidding war among publishers, The Language of Flowers tells the visceral and deeply touching...